Dig Deeper

Say the wordgeothermal and most people think Yellowstone or Iceland, not Manhattan. But this six-story Tribeca town house, home to a family of four, is a reminder that nearly anywhere you can dig a well you can set up a heating and cooling system to take advantage of Earth's steady underground temperature. From its concrete walls to its argon-filled windows, the entire house was designed by the late architect John Petrarca around a geothermal heat pump, bored 1,110 feet into the ground – deeper than the Chrysler Building is tall.

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GEOTHERMAL HEATING SYSTEM
A pump draws water from the well – 52 degrees year-round – which raises or lowers the temperature of refrigerant in an adjacent set of pipes. In cold weather, that liquid flows into a compressor, where it gets heated and is used to warm the floors. In summer, cold refrigerant chills the AC lines.

PUMP PAYOFF
The nonpolluting geothermal setup – like three others on the block – uses up to 72 percent less energy than conventional heating but could take up to 10 years of lower utility bills to recoup its cost.

THERMOSTAT
The system reacts to outdoor conditions on the fly. Plus, owners can control the temp from afar via the Web.

STYROFOAM WALLS
To keep living spaces at a comfortable 68 to 72 degrees, Petrarca used insulated concrete-form walls. Cement is poured into Styrofoam molds reinforced with steel bars. Normally, the forms are removed and tossed after the concrete dries. Here, they remain as part of the building's insulation, helping create a truly airtight structure.

VENTILATION
An airtight house is energy-efficient but requires a ventilation system to maintain air quality. The air-conditioning unit can pull in outside air even when the heat is on. The filtration is so efficient that when the World Trade Center collapsed just blocks away, no dust made it into the living area.

– Jill Fehrenbacher

How To: Go Solar

[an error occurred while processing this directive] You may not be the first on your block to install photovoltaics, but you can be extra-smart about your D.I.Y. project.

Evaluate your access to the sun. If a few of the cells on a panel end up in the shade, power generation can drop by 85 to 90 percent.

Choose the right system. Want a house that produces all of its own electricity? Opt for monocrystalline or polycrystalline panels. They're the most efficient – and the most expensive. Amorphous photovoltaics are roughly half the price but only about half as efficient. If you can't bear the appearance of those big black roof slabs, go with building-integrated photovoltaics (BIPV). Your normal-looking roof and windows become solar catchers.

Optimize your positioning. One rule of thumb: Subtract 20 degrees from your latitude to find the best angle for mounting. In Seattle, latitude 47 degrees north, you'd want to install your panels at a 27-degree angle facing due south.

Pump it up a notch and install a solar collector, a kind of water heater that sits on your roof. An antifreeze-like liquid runs through the collector and then through pipes down to your storage tank, translating warmth from the sun into steam in the shower.

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